Influenza sweeps Arbon Valley with no doctor within forty miles
In the fall of 1918 the Spanish influenza reached Arbon Valley a few weeks after its one doctor had gone back to Pocatello, and whole families fell ill together.
Old newspapers.
Stories retold in 2026 from the newspapers that reported them, with quotations and links to the original pages.
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Routine notices (meeting notices, reminders and classifieds) are left out of this list; find them under Notices.
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Smiling through the lean years, the Humphrey brothers thresh twenty bushels at Crystal
Brothers Horace and Roy Humphrey kept smiling through good years and bad on the dry farms of Arbon and Crystal, and two of Horace's Arbon-born sons later made their way to Barrow, Alaska, and Promontory, Utah.
Arbon Valley gets its herd district, and no one objects
In July 1918 the Power County commissioners heard a petition from Arbon Valley residents for a herd district and, with no one standing against it, created the district on July 27.
Half a million bushels of wheat and no railroad to haul it
In 1918 Arbon Valley expected nearly half a million bushels of wheat with the railroad 25 to 35 miles away, and its call for motor trucks reached the national trade press.
Four sisters from Summit answer the call as nurses
One after another, four daughters of W. A. Nunnelley of Summit trained as nurses, and the papers traced them through a Navy enlistment, the influenza of 1918–19 and a Logan diploma in 1920.
Pocatello paper calls the spoiled Pauline wheat "rank fiction"
In June 1918 the Pocatello Tribune called the Nonpartisan League's charge that Pauline wheat had rotted "rank fiction," a month after its own report that some of it had spoiled.
A mountain of Pauline wheat, left in the weather, goes to Herbert Hoover
Sacked wheat bought in the fall of 1917 lay uncovered at a Pauline grain platform into the next summer, and while the nation saved wheat for the war, the Nonpartisan League carried its spoiling to Herbert Hoover.
The road to Michaud must follow the allotment lines
When the Fort Hall lands on lower Bannock Creek were divided into allotments, the valley's road to Michaud had to move, Pauline farmers leased allotted ground, and by 1922 the land of allottees who had died was up for sale.
Arbon bids up a cake as the valley opens the Red Cross drive
On one May night in 1918, Arbon outbid the speakers from American Falls for a Red Cross cake while Pauline heard four speakers and Crystal raised its whole quota before going home.
Arbon Valley families winter away and the spring columns count them home
In the fall of 1917 many Arbon Valley families left their farms for the winter, a few stayed by choice, and in March 1918 the valley columns counted them home.
A Relief Society social at Crystal, and the women who led the valley's societies
A 1918 notice of a Relief Society social at Crystal opens a trail through six years of valley columns and, decades on, the obituaries that named the women who ran those societies.
Arbon Valley goes to war on Old Jim Hill, and the weed talks back
In 1917 and 1918 Arbon Valley's wheat farmers fought Jim Hill mustard, a weed that rolled across the country as a tumbleweed, and the Press's roving farm writer gave the weed a chance to boast.
Through hail and mustard, Arbon Valley's 1917 wheat brings wartime prices
In the first year of America's war, Arbon Valley's dry-farm wheat came through hail, heat and Jim Hill mustard to a thin harvest that sold for as much as $1.95 a bushel.
An Arbon couple find the Logan Temple burned and marry in Salt Lake City
Eddie Davis and May Mathews of Arbon traveled to Cache Valley in December 1917 to marry in the Logan Temple, arrived the day it caught fire, and took the train to Salt Lake City to marry there.
In Mendon, the Arbon Andersens kept coming home to their mother
Sophia Andersen never lived in Arbon Valley, yet from 1917 to her death in 1939 the papers show her Arbon sons, daughters and grandchildren making their way back to her house in Mendon, Utah.
Hatfield's tractor plows 350 acres in a valley of horse teams
From a 10-20 tractor plowing 350 acres in 1916 to a Fordson on a 1921 sale bill, the papers show the first tractors at work beside Arbon Valley's big horse teams.
With the coal bins empty, Arbon Valley goes back to the canyons for wood
In the fall of 1917, with coal scarce, an American Falls Press farm writer found Arbon Valley ranchers hauling fuel from the same canyons that had given them the logs for their cabins.
Ten cents, two cows and a greased pig built the Bailey ranch at Arbon
J. R. and Annie Bailey reached Arbon with ten cents, two cows and some debts, and by 1917 a farm writer found them on 560 acres, with a greased pig still part of the family lore at their golden wedding in 1940.
A deputy behind a telephone pole catches the Pauline wheat thieves
In November 1917 a Pauline wheat buyer followed a stolen load by lantern, and Deputy Sheriff Hy Secrist waited for the thieves behind a telephone pole.
At the Davis store, the housework takes a back seat
Esther Davis kept house, kept chickens and kept the counter of the general store she and Ed Davis ran at Arbon, a valley landmark until 1931.
Two Lusk brothers of Pauline marry two Bailey sisters of Arbon
Six weeks after he was drafted in 1917, Park Lusk of Pauline had been promoted twice, and the papers went on to follow him, his brother Dave and the Bailey sisters they married through war, a young wife's death and the obituaries of the 1950s.
Isabelle Noble, little clerk of the Pauline store, dies at 12
Isabelle Noble, 12, who helped behind the counter of her father's store at Pauline, died of a burst appendix in 1917, one of four children John and Fanny Noble buried between 1915 and 1921.
Arbon's first settler tells how the valley began
In the fall of 1917 David J. Bowen told the American Falls Press how he found water on Knox Creek in 1892, built a cabin of aspen logs the next year and became postmaster of the valley's first post office.
Bugle calls at midnight as the valley sends off its draft men
In the fall of 1917 Arbon and Crystal danced, built bonfires and stood for a cornetist's bugle calls to send the valley's first draft men off to Camp Lewis.
A roving farm writer called the Pilgrim walks the Arbon Valley roads
In the fall of 1917 the American Falls Press sent a farm writer who signed himself the Pilgrim over the roads of Crystal, Pauline and Arbon, mostly on foot, and he wrote down what he met along the way.
Arbon neighbors hear a car at the gate, and it turns out to be an aeroplane
In the first week of September 1917 the Arbon correspondent of the American Falls Press told of an aeroplane that neighbors saw or heard crossing the valley after dark, a dozen years before any flight over Arbon was put on record.
Before the draft called them, valley men were already enlisting
Through 1917, while the new draft was still being drawn, young men of Arbon and Crystal walked into recruiting offices at Pocatello, Salt Lake City and Portland, and the papers set down their names a few at a time.
Crystal settlers finish their own telephone line to Pocatello
Crystal settlers set light poles toward Pocatello in the winter of 1917 with Commercial Club money, and by July the line was joined to Mountain States at a fifteen-cent toll.
A June snowdrift and a broken bridge: the roads to town in 1917
In 1917 a deputy sheriff was stranded six hours in a June snowdrift, a mail carrier forded floodwater and a Portneuf bridge broke under a load of Crystal grain.
A Pauline family moves on, a few at a time
When the Blackfoot paper found Wallace Jenks leasing reservation land in May 1917, his family had already spent several years at Pauline, and some of them would stay on until the mortgages came due.